Hey Warpshadoians,I was planning to keep this project under wraps until I started work on it. (But things are quiet in the forums and posting now is little more than blatant content creation.)

Ever since White Dwarf 213 (it's seared in my memory) I've wanted to make an epic scale Tyranid army. A while ago Black Tide helped me to acquire all the models I need. Thanks so much mate.

[Open in new window]I'm looking forward to starting on them - even if it won't be for a while.

_________________"I know you may find the Tyranids physically repellent to look at but believe you me, you don't want to let them out of your sight." Hojan Storall Technomagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus

Well aren't those magical, Very cool Yale. Very cool indeed. That and I've heard god things about the epic system.

_________________I like to think of this forum as a gentleman's club, where we all sit in huge chairs by a roaring fire wearing robes, smoking from pipes and discussing the finer points of voracious space-beasts.
-Bocks

Epic is a really fun game. Each turn is interleaved, so the generals declare what all the units are going to do, then take turns to activate units in sequence.

Instead of feeling like "you go, I go" you both commit to a plan of action at the same time, then get surprised by events unfolding throughout each turn. In many ways, it feels like a more modern and better set of rules than 40k...

Epic is a really fun game. Each turn is interleaved, so the generals declare what all the units are going to do, then take turns to activate units in sequence.

Instead of feeling like "you go, I go" you both commit to a plan of action at the same time, then get surprised by events unfolding throughout each turn. In many ways, it feels like a more modern and better set of rules than 40k...

That does sound like a cool mechanic. Reminds me of Robo Rally, only better because, well, they're models you paint and build yourself.

Thanks guys. I will paint them one day, but in the mean time just owning them makes me happy. That sounds weirdly materialistic, but I love knowing that when I get the time I can start without needing to worry about getting the models.

_________________"I know you may find the Tyranids physically repellent to look at but believe you me, you don't want to let them out of your sight." Hojan Storall Technomagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus

I've only ever seen one Epic game ever played and that was over five years ago. ... how's the gameplay?

Epic is a stack of fun. I agree with bugsculptor that even though the game is more abstract than 40K, it feels more modern and realistic and true to the background. Reducing to-hit, to wound, and twin-linkedness all to one roll works surprisingly well. Ranges feel more 'right' too. They are all familiar to anyone that has played 40K, but they feel more natural at the 6mm scale. Different movement speeds for vehicles means that the zippy rhino based tanks really outpace the lumbering chimeras and especially slow leman russes of the Imperial Guard.

The alternating activation makes for a tense game, and the order you chose to activate your detachments makes a huge difference. You can attempt to activate more than one detachment, but it starts getting risky.

And I really like the elegance of the blast markers. A detachment gains blast markers through being shot at and through losing units, and as it gains more blast markers it become more and more suppressed and less reliable. It works pretty well.

Tropic Thunder wrote:

...Does GW still support it at all?...

Sadly GW doesn't support it any longer. That sucks. But I'm grateful GW kept all the specialist games going for as many years as they did, and for many years after the games stopped being profitable.

_________________"I know you may find the Tyranids physically repellent to look at but believe you me, you don't want to let them out of your sight." Hojan Storall Technomagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus